On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 15:52:05 -0800, Derek Blazer wrote: > Hello all, > > I recently acquired an older computer from a co-worker and I wish to get rid > of windows95 and replace it with linux so that I may play. I have tried > loading Redhat 6.1, Mandrake 7.0, and Caldera 2.3. All three have given me > the same error: "Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 08:04". I > have briefly searched the step-by-step site and the Caldera users list > archive to no avail. The only references in the archive for this kind of > task only say to boot the linux installation CD and proceed, well that > doesn't seem to work in this case. Can anybody shed some light on this? > Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Here are some details about > the computer: > > Pentium 150 > 80 meg ram > 6 gig hd (Seagate, I think) > Creative Labs Banshee with 16 meg sdram > > > Derek
You might try running the cdrom as a rescue disk to see what is happening. I know you can do that with the RH disk. Boot it and then do 'linux rescue' That will start linux in ram. Then do 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' and write down what that looks like. If you are booting with LILO you can do: mount -t ext2 /dev/hdax /mnt (where the x is the partition number for /) less /mnt/etc/lilo.conf (see what it has for the / partition) The kernel is loading, but it is not finding the / partition. I don't know why that is. How are you trying to boot? What do you think your / partition is? Tell us what you find with the fdisk command above and in your lilo.conf, if you are using LILO. Anita _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list Archives, Digests, etc at http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
